


for one more moment

by renecdote



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bedside Vigils, Brotherly Love, Dick is self-sacrificing, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, but what else is new, worrying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27704470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: He doesn’t get what the big deal is. He saw someone who needed help, so he helped. Just because the someone was his brother, and the help involved stepping in front of a giant mallet, doesn’t make a difference. Dick would do it again in a heartbeat.“Perhaps,” Alfred suggests, “that is precisely the problem.”
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Comments: 16
Kudos: 240





	for one more moment

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on tumblr ("You don't have to leave.")
> 
> Title from a quote by George F. Kennan: _Heroism is endurance for one more moment._

There is screaming, somewhere, on the very edge of his awareness. Dick thinks he should do something about that, investigate it at least, but the thought slips through his fingers like water before he can do anything about it. A lot of his thoughts are like that; intangible, fleeting, all muddied together like sediment stirred up from the bottom of a stream. Or maybe like fish, glinting beneath the surface but swimming away whenever he drifts too close.

Dick has always prided himself on his ability to keep a clear head in a crisis. It’s one thing that made him good at being Robin, back in the early days of scaly pants and pixie boots. Bruce used to pretend that Dick’s jokes and quips were annoying, but Dick was always sure that he secretly appreciated them. A joke after being struck by Poison Ivy meant he wasn’t seriously hurt. A quip at a crime scene meant he wasn’t freaking out.

(Bruce used to worry about that a lot in the early days, that they might come across a crime scene too traumatising for Dick’s young mind. He would censor all the cases they took, make Dick stay home if he was investigating a grisly murder. It used to frustrate him, made him feel like Bruce didn’t trust him with the serious stuff, but then he realised it was just one of those (occasionally infuriating) ways that Bruce showed he cared.)

Dick doesn’t feel much like making jokes now. He’s not feeling much of anything beside a blinding pain that pulses in white-hot waves through his back every time he moves. A voice keeps telling him not to move, to stay still, that he might have a spinal injury, but Dick isn’t sure whether it’s actually a person or just the Bruce-like voice in his head.

Red Hood was with him on patrol; he remembers that. They split up though… didn’t they? Oracle radioed them, said there were reports of Harley Quinn wreaking havoc in Robinson park, so they went to check it out, taking different entrances into the park—and that’s where the details get fuzzy. 

Fuzzy and _painful_.

Dick tries to move, tries to get up, tries to assess the situation. Something presses him down though, keeps him still. Harley? Does she have him trapped? Dick wants to struggle harder, but moving invites more of that searing pain and he bites through his lip trying not to cry out.

“Stay still, dammit,” that same, probably-not-actually-in-his-head voice snarls. 

_Yeah,_ Dick thinks, _maybe staying still isn’t such a bad idea._

And then he passes out.

—//—

Waking up is anticlimactic. It happens slowly, painstakingly, blink by fuzzy blink. Dick twitches his fingers and his toes and chokes back a cry when he tries to move further and his body screams in angry protest. He breathes deeply, imagining the pain washing away with every exhale. It doesn’t work, not completely, but it calms him enough to realise that moving too much is a really bad idea. 

He turns his head slightly, pillowcase rubbing against his cheek, and sees an empty chair beside the bed. Recently abandoned, maybe, because there’s a full mug of tea and a phone with earphones dangling off the side of the rolling hospital-style table. All staples of a bedside vigil in the cave infirmary. Dick relaxes muscles he hadn’t realised were so tense. Not captured, not dead, probably not dying. Alfred has him; he’s in good hands.

The relief brings tiredness heavy enough to drag down his eyelids and Dick is asleep again before he can find out who was sitting the vigil.

—//—

Maybe he dreamed the bedside vigil because there is still nobody there when he wakes next—and no sign that there ever was. The pain isn’t so bad this time, but Dick still spends a few minutes just lying there, remembering how to move, then figuring out whether he even wants to.

The automatic doors hiss open before he makes a decision and Dick blinks up at the pensive face that leans over him.

“Hi,” he says, wincing at the rasp of his voice. 

Jason frowns. “I’ll get Alfred,” he says.

“Wait,” Dick says,.“You don’t have to…”

_Leave._

_Get Alfred._

_Look so upset._

But maybe he blinks too long before he says it because Jason is already gone and the words ring hollow in the empty room.

—//—

Alfred’s report, delivered with his usual steady bedside manner, is that Dick was lucky.

Jason’s report, delivered with significantly more vexation, is that Dick is a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot who did not need to jump in front of Jason when Harley swung her mallet because he had the situation under control.

Supposedly.

The supposedly is Dick’s amendment and when he shares it with his brother, Jason’s face twists in truly impressive ways before he throws up his hands and storms out, muttering angry nonsense under his breath. 

“You’re welcome!” Dick calls after him.

He doesn’t get what the big deal is. He saw someone who needed help, so he helped. Just because the someone was his brother, and the help involved stepping in front of a giant mallet, doesn’t make a difference. Dick would do it again in a heartbeat.

“Perhaps,” Alfred suggests, “that is precisely the problem.”

It’s… possible he has a point. 

—//—

As soon as Dick is (mostly) mobile and (not really) allowed out of the infirmary, he tracks Jason down. The good thing about Jason is that he’s predictable; if it were Tim or Damian, Dick would probably have to check half a dozen places before getting lucky, but this time he heads straight to the library on the second floor and, sure enough, finds Jason tucked into a wingback chair by the window. Dick sinks into the chair opposite with a wince.

Jason takes one look at him and says, “Don’t.”

Dick ignores him.

“I’m not sorry,” he opens with. “Maybe you could have handled it, maybe you couldn’t have, but you didn’t _have_ to. I was right there.”

“Trust me,” Jason’s voice is bitter, “I remember.”

Irritation licks beneath Dick’s skin. He doesn’t know what the hell Jason’s problem is—he would have done the same thing!—but he’s tired and he’s sore and he’s just… so over the passive aggressive bullshit.

“You could say thank you.”

Jason glares at him. “For almost dying? Yeah, pass.”

“For saving your life.”

“You didn’t.”

“I—”

“You know, you were screaming,” Jason cuts in. “You were lying on the ground, screaming, and—” He looks away, back down at the book in his lap. “You kept calling me Bruce.”

Oh. Dick doesn’t really remember that. Everything between getting the call from Oracle and waking up in the infirmary is fuzzy.

Jason laughs, sharp and unamused. “You kept calling me Bruce and that wasn’t even the worst part about the whole experience.”

“I’m going to be fine, Jay,” Dick says. He means to be confident and reassuring but it comes out gentle, careful. It’s been a long time since he’s had a conversation like this with Jason.

“What happens when you’re not?”

Dick is thrown for such a loop that all he can say it, “Excuse me?”

He gets the sudden feeling that he and Jason are having very different conversations. And the subsequent feeling that he’s not going to like the direction Jason takes it.

“You weren’t here, the last time you were dead.” Jason is looking—glaring—right at him. His jaw is tight, his voice even tighter, like he’s one of those plastic wind-up toys that has been wound too long. “So you don’t know what it was like, living around Bruce and Alfred and—and the others. And maybe you think we all rallied together, comforted each other, helped each other, but that’s bullshit. We tore each other apart.”

“Jay…”

Jason clears his throat. “All I’m saying, is maybe take a second to think about whether it’s really necessary before you go jumping in front of a bullet for someone.”

_It wasn’t a bullet_. Dick bites his lip on the words. He knows that’s not the point. 

“You were in trouble.”

“I wasn’t.”

They’re never going to agree on that, it seems. Dick changes track again. “There isn’t always time for thinking. You know that.”

Jason snaps his book shut. “You know what, I’m done with this conversation. If you’re not even going to pretend—“

“Okay,” Dick interrupts, reaching out to grab Jason’s arm before he can get up and storm out. “Okay, fine, I’ll try. Happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

The silence after that is undeniably awkward. Dick shifts, trying not wince, and clears his throat, “So, uh, what are you reading?”

Jason gives him a look that screams _seriously?_ but he sighs and settles back into his chair, reopening the book where he closed it. “You wouldn’t like it,” he begins, but Dick listens while he explains the overly complicated plot anyway, relaxing back in his own chair. At some point, he closes his eyes. At some point after that, Jason pulls him to his feet and tugs him down the hallway to his bedroom. 

And when Dick opens his eyes at another point much later, Jason is still there, his book abandoned, all six-foot-two of him stretched out and snoring on the other side of the bed, exhaustion winning out over his vigil. Dick smiles and closes his eyes again. He sleeps easily.


End file.
